Early in the morning

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This is from Liz Hulley, a friend and co-worker here in St. Pete. She has a great blog; I encourage you to visit it.

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Who likes to get up on a cold, dark morning? Not me…although in the summer I would probably find another excuse.

But as I was going about my morning routine, an excerpt popped into my head:

“Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance…” (The Gospel of John, 20:1)

What does morning mean to you? Perhaps it includes a lot of moaning and groaning before you begin your day. But how many wonderful discoveries have been made in the morning! The main one, of course, the discovery of our Risen Lord.

That is my encouragement for the day.   🙂

To Hungary and Serbia

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I’ve just returned from a trip to Budapest for a conference and a visit to Serbia where I spoke at a church.   I traveled with John Bull, a Stoneworks missionary based in St. Petersburg.  The picture above is of the Danube flowing through Budapest, taken from the Citadel overlooking the city, with the foothills of the Carpathian mountains in the background.

We attended the Free Methodist European missions conference. The European director and good friend, Jerry Coleman, invited us to attend.  We met missionaries and local leaders from 14 countries — from Bulgaria to the Canary Islands.

It was a great conference, and I’m hopeful that these new relationships will lead to future partnerships in ministry.  I was especially blessed by meeting missionaries from Ukraine and Romania.  I was also asked to play my guitar for two services, and it was good to be able to minister in that way.

We were all very encouraged in our work, and it was great to see and experience spiritual unity with brothers and sisters from so many countries.

After the conference, we drove to Batcki Petrovac, Serbia to visit a church.  Last summer I met one of the elders, Jan Dudas, in Montenegro, and he invited me to visit when I had a chance.   I was very happy to be able to speak at their church on my birthday.

Their hometown is a small farming village (about 6000 people) in north Serbia.  The town is 90% Slovak, so they all speak Slovak as well as Serbian, and quite a few people speak English as well.

This part of Serbia is a sort of Bible belt — many churches there were established over 100 years ago and survived through the communist regimes.  It reminded me of visiting believers in small farming towns in the US and Finland — people are the same all over the world it seems.

My relationship with Jan (pronounced Yahn) is very good; his family is great.  I’d love to help send a missionary there to serve that church.  Jan was the best man for Vladimir Cizmanski, a dear friend who is the pastor of the Brethren Assembly in Montenegro (where we’ve recently sent a missionary). I believe that God is setting us all together as living stones.

Olga and I hope to visit there again early next year.  Above at left I’m with John, Jan and his wife Nada, and their three children.

John and I drove quite a distance — about 1300 miles each way. We drove from the Balkans through the heart of central Europe and the Baltics: Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia.

I have a sense that the Lord is calling us to do more work in that area.  It was very good to have more experience there, deepen relationships and meet new people.

It was a very blessed trip, and I look forward to seeing how God opens doors for future ministry.

News from the Cantrells — Adoption

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As many of you know we’ve always wanted a family, and we found out a few years ago that Mike is unable father children. We’ve wanted to receive the family that God gives us, rather than ‘making’ it happen by our own will. The Lord promised Abraham a family, but Abraham and Sara were unwilling to wait for God’s timing and took it into their own hands; that didn’t turn out very well.

So, we’ve waited until we saw the Lord clearly providing for us; and we now feel that this is happening. And we’re very excited about it.

We are going to adopt!

A lot of our friends have adopted, so now we get to share in those experiences. 🙂

Our adoption is a bit different from most others, because we are going to adopt an embryo.

Here’s how that works: couples like ourselves create embryos by in-vitro fertilization; most of these embryos are implanted into the mother; some are not implanted and are frozen; families then choose to donate those frozen embryos to couples like us.

This means that Olga will give birth to our adopted child. Continue reading →

Missions to the Far North

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Here is an update from Street Cry, our church in St. Petersburg.  Please visit the Street Cry site to learn more about the great work that God is doing through the ministry.

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01Our School of Ministry graduate and missionary to the Far North of Russia, Arkady Ledkov (photo on the left; we wrote about his evangelistic work among the nomadic people of the north in the March 2009 issue of our newsletter) spent the summer of evangelism with us in St. Petersburg actively participating in all of the street evangelism events. Then after the summer season ended here, he joined a team of Canadian missionaries for his next trip with the Gospel to the nomads of the tundra. Here is his report:

02This time we started from Salekhard city – the capital of Yamalo-Nenetsky Autonomous Region.  The goal of this trip was to visit new believers who accepted Christ during our previous trips, encourage them in the Lord and bring humanitarian aid to them.  At the same time, we purposed to visit new villages where no one preached the Gospel yet.

Therefore, we rented a boat and went down the Ob River from one small village to another, from one camp of reindeer shepherds to another.  There are actually no roads or way to reach them besides the Ob River.

It was a wonderful time!  We fellowshipped with the reindeer shepherds; they hospitably received us in their tents (called “chooms” in the local language) and introduced us to their families.  We showed the Jesus film and distributed evangelistic literature. God’s presence went with us. And the nomads opened not only their homes but also their hearts to us!

In one place, we were guests of a family of seven and as a result of our visit, all of them repented and accepted Christ as their Lord and Savior. I cannot adequately describe the joy that we all experienced! Continue reading →

Challenge

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Here is another encouraging post from Liz Hulley, a Stoneworks missionary in St. Petersburg —

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Looking back at previous blog posts, I noticed that I often post something from Oswald Chambers in October. I wonder why that is. Perhaps the autumn brings about a kind of desperation that makes me reach for something uplifting.

“The challenge to the missionary does not come on the line that people are difficult to get saved, that backsliders are difficult to reclaim, that there is a wedge of callous indifference; but along the line of his own personal relationship to Jesus Christ.

‘Believe ye that I am able to do this?’ Our Lord puts that question steadily, it faces us in every individual case we meet.

The one great challenge is – Do I know my Risen Lord? Do I know the power of His indwelling Spirit?”*

I don’t have a problem asking myself “What would Jesus do?” I think it is a good idea to follow Christ’s example.

However, we can get into a pattern of striving to make ourselves like Christ, by our own means.

Maybe it’s better to ask ourselves, “Do I trust God in this situation? Have I surrendered this to Him, or am I still trying to do it all myself?”

*Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest -reading for Oct. 27th

A Postcard from Russia — Valeria’s Baptism

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Many of you will remember Oksana, the orphan who lived with us several years ago. She now has a two year old daughter named Valeria.

Oksana wanted for Valeria to be baptized, and she asked us to be the godparents and participate in the baptism, which was in an Orthodox church (hence the headcoverings). Valeria was one of several children baptized that day.

Valeria is a cutey, very full of life and enjoys laughing and playing with the cat.

Oksana, though, is not doing very well. She was quite distant from us (disappeared) for a while, but we’ve been reconnecting with her.

The father of Valeria is no longer around. Oksana lived with another man for over a year; he died as a result of drug addiction. She is now living with another man who is also a drug addict. Her relationships tend to be abusive.

She’s 23 years old. And, very sadly, she recently tested positive for HIV and Hepatitis C.

We keep praying for Oksana and have faith that God is going to redeem her life. God keeps giving us assurance that He is at work.

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It is not the healthy that need a doctor.

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A friend recently sent this to me.  Her marriage just about fell apart, but at the last minute she and her husband agreed to reconcile:

I had been thinking recently about the past two years and all the pain I have been through.  I started feeling sorry for myself and a little angry at the circumstances.  The deepest hurts came from lies and broken relationships, regarding my husband’s choices.

So, naturally I was praying about restoration and new understandng as I look at my husband.  God clearly spoke to me and said….you fell in love with a sinner, an outcast….that’s exactly what you are supposed to do!

My devotional the next morning led me to Matthew 9:11-13.   It talks about God sitting with tax collectors and sinners as everyone questioned Him about His motive.

His answer was simple….”It is not the healthy that need a doctor, but the sick. I want kindess more than I want sacrifices.”

At that moment, it dawned on me…..sitting with and loving the ‘broken’ is what God wants from me. It’s what He did!

Testimony from Street Cry

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Here is another great testimony from the work Street Cry is doing in Estonia:

We continue to have meetings in a women’s prison every Friday night, preaching the Gospel to the unsaved and equipping the new believers by teaching on the basics of Christian life, praise and worship, prayer, and personal relationship with Jesus.

As a result, the girls who are the most serious about the Lord started getting together every day 2 hours before dinner for a time of worship, prayer for each other’s needs and reading the Bible together. They invite whosever will come! N. who got saved during one of the meetings, is now sharing the full version of her testimony:

“I was born into and grew up in a good, I would even say practically an ideal family. My parents were both doctors, very intelligent, with high morals and they did their best to instill positive things into my wonderful sister and I.

Nevertheless, I remember growing up with a strange feeling that there must be more to life than what I had. I have always been looking for something… Something I could not even define, but I knew I would recognize it when I found it..

At 18, I graduated from high school with honors and then entered medical college to be a paramedic. After graduation, my parents helped me to get a good job and gave me an apartment. Soon I got married to a nice caring man and over the years, we had 5 sons. Life was going good, except for the feeling, ‘there must be something more…’

Then I met another man… we had an affair, later he introduced me to methamphetamine… It all definitely felt very thrilling…at first. But before I knew it, I had turned into an addict and a drug dealer and everything else that goes with this way of life… Continue reading →

A Postcard from Russia — Apples, Mushrooms and Berries

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The end of the summer is upon us, and now is the time of harvest and of looking forward. The apples, mushrooms and berries (and carrots, peas, cucumbers and potatoes) are plentiful.

Last week we were at dacha again for Olga’s grandmother’s birthday; she is 77 years old this year.  On that day, August 28, eight years ago I proposed to Olga in the garden there. Each year since we’ve been at dacha to celebrate the birthday. It’s a blessing that we can have time with family. Olga’s grandfather, Orest, is doing fairly well, in his 90th year.

God continues to bring new opportunities. We look forward to telling you over the coming months about a few things that are on the horizon. MIR is doing well, Stoneworks is growing, our ministries in Belarus and Montenegro are increasing, new workers are being called to work along side us, and key relationships are growing deeper. We are thankful for the fruitfulness that God brings.

In His love,

Mike and Olga Cantrell